To Bed, To Bed, To Bed
by Freekiellie
Summary: Their story told in verse. [GinHiji]
1. Value

Keep your back to me, spine against mine.

I want to feel the weight to tell me you're fine.

We are enduring struggle but not yet home,

roaming the battlefield strewn with bone.

Your boots are muddy, and mine bloody.

You comb through the enemy; I slay, slay, slay.

Keep away; I have killed again.

Picking through soldiers, fathers, and sons,

I think of their brothers, sisters, mums.

Sword stills.

Orphans are screaming.

I feel your weight come and I just keep on killing.

We have a goal.

We have a goal.

So I steal and steal from soul upon soul.

If I weighed my gold against yours, dear foe,

who is so bloody, bold and resolute,

I could take no more from you or your kin.

But there's a back to me worth the earth, for this

I thieve, naïve,

and cold silver will cut through gold again.

Keep your back to me, spine against mine

For I am weak and feeble,

drunk and unable to still the tremors in my hand.

Nine, ten down, red vines crawl up my arms,

the signs of death wind up to my neck.

Fine droplets splatter, the black murder scatters.

Come land between me and what I have done.

You're there. I have to remind myself.

I compare your clarity with the chaos encircling,

your glare piercing a path for us and a wealth of

gold loses its shine in the grass.

Hold me.

I'm shaking under the weight on my shoulders.

You sate my conscious,

sedate my mind into numbness,

erase my gutless self and sins …

Hold me close.

I'm scared of what I was.

It's over now - the fight that is -

but the peace I thought I'd find is amiss.

You kiss my lips but it feels so stale.

My heels fail to move after you,

the corpses behind are holding me back.

I hear them wail at me – _my daughter,_

 _my wife,_

You have slaughtered a father,

a partner,

and for what cause?

All for those decrepit morals of yours.

* * *

 **AN -** I got so nervous uploading this but it seemed to get a good reception on AO3 so here it is! Part of my new series of shorts, their story in verse! Yeeey~


	2. Worth

After the battle, Hijikata tries to heal Gintoki but his partner isn't there.

* * *

Your mind strays from me,

still your eyes on me.

Dance your lips across my neck, for me.

Once more, for me,

search the dips in my bone.

I can tell by your tone.

You're chained down to the past, I see.

What you did wasn't wrong.

You were stronger, you won.

But now you're left despising,

hating what you've done.

It was worth it, my love.

I kiss your cheeks; you're still not there,

whispering your name into your chest

and to you it's just air.

I can't love like this.

Where are you now?

You stare at the ceiling, dreaming.

You're with him, aren't you?

You can't feel me, can you?

I'm leaning against you and I'm just a weight.

I'm seeing see us two and you're on the front.

You're hunting blood whilst I'm in the rush.

You're pushing away and I bear the brunt.

Human beyond humans,

you care and you feel.

You love more than anyone,

give more than many would,

hurt more than plenty could.

There is no difference,

no bad and good.

Whether you lay the grave or fill,

moving forwards or remaining still,

with black heart or good will,

to kill is to kill.

For your repentance,

each night of remembrance,

you are a good man.

To me, you are good.

So please look at me,

lay your palms on me,

wrap your arms around me,

come back to me.

You are a good man.

You are righteous.

You are truthful.

You _are_ worthy.


	3. Temperance

Waking up to you is beautiful.

The crease in your brow,

I don't know how,

it just makes me feel okay.

Sometimes sleep isn't easy to find.

A rolling head,

My comrades dead -

I'm glad you decided to stay.

This morning in particular

I love how your nose

crinkles as you doze :

What is it you're thinking today?

It's warm under these sheets.

Though it's nearly noon

and I'm leaving soon,

I'm planning excuses to delay.

I recall once upon a time when

 _we_ were you and I,

we were passers-by.

Love was how much you'd care to pay.

I remember the year passed:

some tentative looks,

then ropes and handcuffs.

Straight forward romance led astray.

And just as I'm lost in thought,

blue eyes flutter,

your lips mutter

'Good morning' in the sun's dim ray.

I always wait for our time to end.

For you to awaken

and see that I'm broken,

toss my dull and cracked body away.

Before your eyes are fully open,

full wound inspection,

checking for infection,

though we were both caught in the same fray.

I tell you how precious you are to me

inside my head

and aloud instead

I complain that you smell like an ashtray.

Our relationship is full of chaos.

Drunken fights,

kisses and bites;

I'd have it no other way.


	4. Fortitude

Christmas isn't white.

There are grey skies all day and every colour is drained away

leaving a tainted world behind, a dirty white, blocking sunlight

where crisp blue has been mauled.

Impure; hollow; bleak.

Not a bird in the sky, no swallow's wing, no song or chirp.

Greenery is dead, beating hearts retreat under the earth.

Winter knows not life or birth, the circle ends.

Things only die in wintertime.

I still remember that bitter cold turning the blood in my veins to treacle.

I understood that the end was coming,

crawled to a graveyard to call it near,

too frozen to feel the feet I walked on

or even the fear.

As if by request the snow fell to bury me,

prepared a funeral attended only by the dead,

bled my name onto the soil - my resting place,

underfed and frozen, asleep on a glorious four poster bed.

Coffin-less.

The cheapest death awaiting,

none to pay the price but myself and mother.

Just a fallen another who never truly learned to walk,

ran towards death, fed the hawks a spineless corpse

vein by vein, in vain.

That December, I lived and this one, I thrive.

You relit the dying embers -

A fire so alive it grew tails to touch the earth,

cast shadows taller than the monsters it lighted.

The cold was barred by the warmth of a door.

I learned the taste of food once more,

refreshed my tongue with substance,

my head with calmness and my eyes with peaceful darkness,

knew easy sleep once more - one from which I could awaken,

unshaken, without alert.

Though Wintertime is still monotony,

I have the tools to shut it out, the brush to paint-over doubt,

colour drought ocean blue and turn about tsunamis.

I have you.

I have him.


	5. Spite

Hijikata thinks about Gintoki and his rival.

Who is he to you?

I curled my hands into my sides

so that they wouldn't touch you,

cemented my feet into the earth, kept the sky at bay.

Each night I sleep with you

separated by another man whose name you whisper.

It isn't love in your words …

but I still can't rest.

Mornings I rise with the sun without feeling its warmth

and I'm gone before you can learn my face.

You don't know whether I'm sleepy

grumpy

ugly

or beautiful.

You don't know me when the sun rises.

Who is he to you?

I've already asked but it's on my mind,

always there.

Always, always there.

A virus within you that you've passed on to me.

Now he coils around our legs under the moon,

tastes the warm air between us so that he can

poison it with his own stench.

The snake you harbour lives in your dreams

and mine.

It lives off the rats tails in your mouth,

the vermin in your eyes each time I look at you.

Always there.

And it's not your fault.

 _I_ let the snake in.

I turned your words into critters of the night,

morphed everything you did into jealousy.

Green scales line my fingertips:

the real monster is me.

Always there,

coiled in my intestines,

the need to know:

who is he to you?


End file.
